Speaker: Dr. Madeline Weld
Topic: The Century Initiative: An organization to advance the interests of the growth cartel through mass immigration.
Time: Apr 23, 2025 01:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Bio:
Madeline Weld is the president of Population Institute Canada, whose objective is to promote awareness of population issues and the reality that there really are limits to growth. PIC advocates for universal access to family planning and supports the Canadian government’s funding of international family planning programs. However, PIC has been very critical of Canada’s policy to grow its population through mass immigration. This policy has been in place since 1990 but was greatly accelerated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose immigration policies seem to have been set by the Century Initiative, which advocates for a Canadian population of 100 million by 2100.
Madeline has a B.Sc. (Zoology) from the University of Guelph and an M.S. and Ph.D. (Physiology) from Louisiana State University. She is retired from Health Canada. She served as board member of Planned Parenthood Ottawa (1995-1999) and the Humanist Association of Canada (1999-2003) and was a co-editor of the quarterly magazine Humanist Perspectives from 2012 to 2022.
Talk Summary:
The Century Initiative was created as a vehicle to promote a Canadian population of 100 million by 2100. Given Canada’s low fertility rate, this would be achieved through a massive increase in immigration. Until recently, the Century Initiative’s website proclaimed the reasons for this growth to be to increase the GDP, to enable Canada to play a bigger role on the world stage, and to counter an aging population. It seems that Canada’s reckless immigration policy under the government of Justin Trudeau was designed to meet the Century Initiative’s objectives. In the face of the disastrous consequences of Trudeau’s policies and the backlash against high immigration that they have generated, the Century Initiative is downplaying its focus on immigration per se and claiming to advocate increased immigration only to foster what that growth allegedly enables: economic strength, innovation, and a high quality of life for all. Don’t believe them.
At 1:10:46 there was a question that resulted in a conversation about water in northeastern Africa. Here is Dr. Madeline Weld’s researched response:
Some excerpts:
From the PowerPoint by David Shinn called “Avoiding a Water War in the Nile Basin (which I obtained in March 2012):
Slide 2: “Water scarcity is single biggest threat to global food security. There is little water left when Nile reaches Mediterranean…Egypt has threatened war if Ethiopia tries to block the Nile Flow. Ethiopia responded that no country can prevent it from using Nile water. Most upstream countries are seeking to use more water before it reaches Egypt.”
Slide 4: Average annual flow of Nile at Aswan from 1870 to 1988 was 88 billion cubic meters….Population in basin predicted to double between 1995 and 2025. Agriculture biggest water consumer.]
Ellen Wohl (2011), The Nile: A Lifeline in the Desert:
“Prior to the closing of the Aswan High Dam, nearly 40% of the Nile’s total annual flow – approximately 30 billion cubic meters of water – entered the Mediterranean from the Nile Delta. This water transported 90% of the sediment washed down from the Ethiopian highlands – more than a hundred million tons of silt – onto the delta. The river spread the remaining 10% of sediment along its floodplain, creating the fertile soils that supported Egyptians for millennia. Once the dam closed, the annual river flow to the ocean dropped to less than 2 billion cubic meters. Sediment remained trapped upstream from the dam, where it diminishes the reservoir storage capacity.”
Earth Policy Institute (2011), When the Nile Runs Dry:
“Unfortunately for Egypt, two of the favorite targets for land acquisitions are Ethiopia and Sudan, which together occupy three-fourths of the Nile River Basin. Today’s demands for water are such that there is little left of the river when it eventually empties into the Mediterranean…Egypt’s plight could become part of a larger, more troubling scenario. Its upstream Nile neighbors—Sudan, with 44 million people, and Ethiopia, with 83 million—are growing even faster, increasing the need for water to produce food… [MW comment: Note that the article says that Egypt’s population of 81 million (2011) was projected to reach 101 million by 2025. In fact, Egypt’s current population is 118 million and was probably closer to 91 million in 2011.]
Gwyne Dyer (2013), Drums Along the Nile:
“A treaty signed in 1929 gave 90 percent of the Nile’s water to the downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan, even though all the water in the river starts as rain in the upstream countries: Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It seemed fair at the time: the 20 million people in the downstream countries depended heavily on irrigation, while the 27 million in the upstream countries had plenty of rain-fed land and hardly irrigated at all. Things have changed since then. According to the International Data Base of the US Census Bureau, there are now six times as many people in the Arabic-speaking countries downstream, and eight times as many people in the African countries upstream. Egypt is using all of its share of the water – and the upstream countries are starting to use the water for irrigation too.”
This article is still available online here: https://gwynnedyer.com/2013/drums-along-the-nile/
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